Amy Dale - The Fall

The greatest harm can come to us from the hands of those we love

A terrified woman runs for the door, her final desperate attempt to escape a cruel and controlling fianc. She is too late. A secret camera captures him covering her mouth to suppress her screams as he drags her back inside. Sixty nine seconds later, Lisa Harnum is dead.

Lisas fianc, Simon Gittany, insists he has done nothing wrong he claims his beautiful partner died for a secret she feared would be exposed. But a week later, a grieving mother in Toronto answers the phone. A man who looked up 15 storeys into the city skyline has come forward. And what hes seen changes everything.

The Fall goes behind the headlines of Australias most captivating court case to tell the story of how Lisa fell in love but then grew to fear her fianc. It reveals that, while she couldnt escape the danger of Simon Gittany, from beyond the grave she left behind clues to help catch a killer.

30 July 2011

Please help me, help, God help me! she screams out into the hallway. Shes made it.

Her head is past the doorframe and, critically, in front of the small pinhole buried in the wall that is unseen to the naked eye.

The door of 1503 is heavy but shes prised it open. She has her bag; he can see that, though. He doesnt know, and will never learn, about the note.

Maybe the neighbours will be home, please let them be home.

His shadow comes before the hand.

God help me, she screams out again. Shes louder this time. People can surely hear her.

She can see his bicep as it curls tightly around her, as large as it looks when he lifts weights. He can press double her body mass, and does almost daily at his platinum membership gym, so shes all too easy to grab in the headlock. His hand circles around her mouth and, using only his palm force, he hauls her back in.

She screamed a few seconds ago and the thought of the commotion, and the hope that the neighbours heard her, gives her enough strength to push for the door one last time.

Only a few months ago, he swore hed take her home for a holiday, to see her mother, if she bolstered her weight to 50 kilograms. Shes two kilograms under that now but, fragile as she currently feels, she only has to get to the door.

The door moves a crack, just enough to cause a shadow of light on the floor to widen briefly, before it is slammed closed on her.

Her bag is still on her shoulder. There are two couches in the living room but the black leather doesnt touch them. She cant break free from his hold as they move past an open kettle on the kitchen bench top.

Someone would have heard the scream. Someone must be calling the police. His hand is still clamped over her and its too late for her anyway; theyre already near the glass balcony door and she wont be able to cry out again.

Its winter in Sydney but the temperatures of a July morning here cant chill a Toronto-born woman.

Shes horizontal in his arms now, held out and over on the balcony like an offering, a sacrifice to the control he has over her. Later, they would all hope she hadnt been awake for this part.

She used to love him for his strength. She joked to her mum shed never spent so much time inside a gym as she did when they were first together. She could use that force now. As it has been for so long now, he has all the power.

They watched the Mardi Gras parade from this very spot. Her eyes had feasted on the colour and spectacle of Sydney, even from such a sheer drop. They positioned the treadmill up against this glass to take in the spectacular view of Hyde Park before them.

If anything happens to me, she whispered to her mother, with careful instructions, a few hours ago.

The note is still in her pocket, torn into precise pieces.

The scream had been all she had left. For her, it was the end. Then came the fall.

Susan Glanville never met the woman living next door, the fiance of the man she knew only as Simon. She remembers Simon mentioning to her one day, when the building alarm went off and they trudged down obligingly to Liverpool Street, that the girl was staying inside because she was sleeping. Simon himself couldnt really be bothered going downstairs either, he told her. He was used to the alarm going off.

Susan occasionally heard a womans voice inside apartment 1503, but had never seen her face. Apartment living in The Hyde is to share walls with strangers. She and her husband Charles, both retired, saw Simon in passing. They knew only his first name.

Please help me, help, God help me! a womans voice screams out.

Susan is startled from her morning chores. She and Charles had been about to go downstairs for a cup of coffee, having risen early at 6 am on this pretty winter Saturday morning.

There is banging on the front door and Susan realises the woman screaming is right outside their front door. She sounds as if she is deathly afraid.

Susan looks around the corridor and sees her door, the entrance to unit 1504, is shaking with the womans bangs.

She steels herself and moves towards the door. Suddenly, there is silence. The womans cries have stopped dead in their tracks.

David appears beside his wife. My God, what was that? he asks.

The couple does not normally lock the door when theyre at home, but they opt to twist the front knob so its secured. Their door is once again still. Charles moves to go outside, but decides against it. Its clear there is no one in the hallway. Susan moves back into the living area, while Charles returns to his morning task of attempting, without success, to repair an old fax machine that is gathering dust on a lower shelf of a spare bedroom.

Another piercing scream erupts and Susan is jolted again. This noise, loud and female, seems to have come from the opposite direction to the please help me! cries. Short, but it was definitely a vicious shout. She thinks it may have come from the park, so she goes out onto her balcony, looks down onto the ground Nithsdale Street, which runs off Liverpool Street but cant see anything that has happened.

The next noises that ring through the 15th floor are sirens, everywhere.

Susan decides it is time for that coffee after all and calls for Charles to meet her downstairs, in a few minutes, at the Canopy Caf.

Stepping outside her front door for the first time since she heard the screams, Susan walks to the lift. The metal doors open to reveal the buildings concierge, Darren Ratcliffe, and a tall man in a police uniform.

She shivers as she travels down the building and waits for Charles in the foyer. She sees the man she knows as Simon, the one who had kept to himself except to smile or nod hello as he walked past in the hallway, sitting in the foyer, his eyes glazed by despair.

Junkies and their ice benders Joshua Rathmell has lived in Darlinghurst for many years. He is no stranger to encountering the drug addicts who stumble around the precinct and his home is barely a kilometre from the edges of Kings Crosss Golden Mile strip. Cutting along the path of Hyde Park that hugs the War Memorial, he is making good time to get to work for a Saturday editing shift at the ABCs Ultimo headquarters. Its nearly 10 am, but weekend work usually allows for a slightly relaxed shift start.

Certainly more relaxed than the man he sees standing on the balcony of The Hyde apartments. From where he stands, Rathmell can hear screaming, angry screaming. He thinks the shirtless man must be deranged, in the throes of a drug episode, and throwing rubbish in a black bag or suitcase from the balcony. Its a long drop for the luggage and, once it is swiftly unloaded, Rathmell keeps his eyes on the man. He sees his hands out in front of him, frozen for a second as though caught in a brief inertia after the object has left them. The man is not stationary. Josh Rathmell sees the man, wearing only red pyjama pants, push back off the balcony and move back inside. He doesnt loiter. He doesnt look down.